Over the last 15 or so years I’ve set up hundreds of partnerships with both big brands and small businesses alike. The majority have focussed on lead generation in one way or another, reaching close to a million business owners with the resulting collaborations.

I’ve had success at varying levels. However, I’ve made or witnessed many mistakes, even within the successful ones, and I’ve learned much more from them than the wins.

These mistakes typically fall into a few similar areas, and so I’m on a mission to help other people avoid them. There’s not much worse than the feeling of regret from a missed or wasted opportunity.

With that in mind, here’s my top 5 reasons why partnerships either fail, or never reach their full potential and fizzle out.

I talk a lot about collaboration and partnerships. All my success in business has been built on them, even if not all my collaborations have been successful.

But most of my personal development has also been anchored around collaboration and community. And, for as much as I talk about the business benefits of an opportunistic mindset, and the practical skills required to lay the foundations of successful partnerships, sometimes the most powerful thing about working or living in this way can be the emotional boost it gives us.

We are going on a family staycation Friday, and I am dreading it. No, I am not dreading the time spent with my loving wife to be and children – although we have done a lot of that recently. No, I am dreading the journey. They usually say the trip to a destination is half the fun, well that person has never been in Kelly’s car for more than two hours listening to Peppa Pig or the soundtrack from Moana on a never-ending loop. And there’s only so many times you can listen to Everything is Awesome.

(I’ve trained them that in my car it’s only proper music, but no such luck in hers, and we need the boot space!)

Taking my mind off the worry reminds me of when music-streaming app Spotify and ride-hailing app Uber let the passenger be the DJ. These two very different products collaborated in 2014, in a campaign joyfully titled ‘A Soundtrack For Your Ride’. 

Drastic and immediate has been the impact of this invisible Covid-19 virus on business great and small. Ever since mid-March, it has been attacking the way we all conduct our business. As an entrepreneur, what has been your reaction? 

I will not name names, but some businesses have shown their true colours in deciding to profiteer at a time when household incomes have never been under higher pressure. But there's also been some great examples of people and brands coming together…

One of the key ingredients in a successful partnership or collaboration is that it adds value to your customer base – to be fair I think it’s something that’s key in all business activity. But in order to do that you need to understand what your customers want, and I mean really want. Not just what you think/hope they want in order to fit in with your next marketing campaign or product launch.

To highlight this, I want to talk about an entertainment collaboration, which on the face of it should have been a perfect match, but really wasn’t.

U2, one of the biggest bands on the planet. Apple, one of the biggest telecommunication brands in the world known for being on the cutting edge. Both brands have a dedicated audience that buys into them.

I know this is going to sound strange, seeing as my passion in business is promoting the benefits of collaborations, but some partnerships are not always going to have a forever and ever ending. Sometimes, the smart thing is not to stick together but to ‘consciously uncouple’. 

Allow me, if I may, to use a high profile celebrity couple as an example of the perfect way to do this.

When eBay met PayPal on 3 October 2002, with a deal valued at $1.5 billion, it was a marriage made in heaven. 

At the time, the chemistry was right, eBay was looking for a secure transaction platform for its B2B and B2C customers on its e-commerce website. PayPal was leaving the entrepreneurial hands of Elon Musk and was going public on the IPO looking to make its name in online merchant services.

I finished building one of my favourite ever bits of Lego. It’s an ideal match for me, Lego and James Bond. The iconic Aston Martin DB5 as first seen in Goldfinger, and then throughout the many years and films that have followed since. 

I was going I was going to just do a quick little post on this perfect collaboration, largely as an excuse to put the photo up, but then as I started to write, it really got me thinking about just how perfectly Lego have nailed not only the idea of working in partnership, but also their strategy for all aspects of it. 

Lego had seen a decline in popularity in the not too distant past, but I think we can all agree that they are very much in the forefront once again. But you rarely see a Lego advert on telly. 

Their success is fundamentally based on their partnerships with other well-known brands. If you walk into a toy shop, or any stockist of their products, the majority of the range on the shelf is partner related, with a smaller amount dedicated to their own sets. Think Star Wars, Harry Potter, Frozen, Marvel, Batman, the list goes on.

I was looking for partnership or collaboration quotes for my book and, other than being surprised how few there were, came across this which really resonated.

'Opportunities increase when you help others win. A little win for a partner is a little win for you'

I often say that having an opportunistic mindset is a crucial factor in developing successful partner relations – but that’s not just about opportunities for yourself.  Treating everyone in your network as a potential partner and looking out for them where you can has so many benefits.

So, you’ve got a really successful collaboration going. It’s bringing great results in for all parties, be it exposure, leads, sales, revenue, or any of the many other metrics a partnership can bring.

That’s it then, it’s working. Job done, right? 

Unfortunately not. Even when things look perfect to succeed, and grow and grow, sometimes they just don’t. Often impacted by things completely out of your control. 

But one of the key things to think about when looking at successful business partnerships is longevity – even when it might be much easier not to. 

I’m on a mission to get people leveraging partnerships as a key part of the business strategy. 

There’s so much to be gained from them, with the sum of the individual parts coming to so much more than the individual components. 

But there’s more to partnerships then just the lead generation that most think of. I thought I’d highlight a few of the direct business benefits (and ok, I start with leads) but that’s not to underestimate the benefits of increased support, creativity and fun that working in partnership can bring – especially in the small business space.